Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

Bauman-Martin: Women on the Edge 259
II
The Petrine domestic code is likely a modified version of the code in
Colossians, which is the oldest Christian Haustafel. 23 The Colossian Haustafel
is clear, brief, and symmetrical. It consists of three pairs of reciprocal exhortations;
in each pair the exhortations articulate the correct attitude or action that
should be taken toward the opposite member of the pair. Each pair consists of
an inferior group and a superior group, each representing a certain social status
(aiJ gunai'ke", oiJ dou'loi, etc.). Each exhortation begins with an address to the
inferior group, who are urged to obey or be submissive to the superior group.
The exhortations to the inferior group are always reciprocated in the Colossian
Haustafel; the dominant group in each pair is addressed immediately following
the address to the inferior group. Each address is followed by a command,
often accompanied by an object. 24 The exhortation is then amplified by another
phrase or more, and a causal clause provides the rationale for such behavior. 25
23 The Colossian code “brings us as near as possible to the beginning of the Christian
Haustafel tradition” (Crouch, Origin and Intention, 32). This is generally agreed to by Dibelius,
Weidinger, David Schroeder, Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, Lohmeyer, Leonhard Goppelt, and others.
See also Hans Conzelmann and A. Lindemann, Interpreting the New Testament: An Introduction
to the Principles and Methods of New Testament Exegesis (trans. Siegfried S. Schatzmann;
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988), 61. This idea of an early Christian Haustafel tradition, of which
the NT Haustafeln are merely later variations, arises from the basic similarities among all the NT
Haustafeln, the remarkable resemblance between the Haustafeln in Colossians and Ephesians, and
syntactical, grammatical, and stylistic differences between the Colossian/Ephesian example and
codes in 1 Peter, Timothy, and Titus, which are also different from one another. Scholars disagree
whether the early Christian tradition was the source only for the Colossian form, on which all the
other NT codes are dependent, or if all the codes are separately dependent on the early form. As
noted earlier in n. 13, Balch is one of the only dissenters here: he argues that the NT codes, Petrine
code included, were borrowed separately and independently from Hellenistic sources and are not
dependent on each other in any way (“Let Wives Be Submissive,” 67, 266). Space does not permit a
full analysis of this subject here, but the Petrine Haustafel varies so significantly from both Christian
and Greco-Roman antecedents that the salient point remains the author’s alteration of the
code to the circumstances of his audience.
24 Either in the imperative mood (uJpotavssesqe) or expressed by an infinitive or participle.
25 Usually introduced by gavr, o{ti, or eijdovte" o{ti. Although these characteristics are somewhat
readily apparent, David Verner has summed them up nicely in The Household of God: The
Social World of the Pastoral Epistles (SBLDS 71; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 87. Verner
adds characteristics that are not part of the Colossian Haustafel because he wants to take all of the
NT Haustafeln into account as contributing to the Haustafel form, when in fact it is possible that
the Colossian Haustafel was paradigmatic and all of the others are variations. Based on these characteristics,
I posited, in my dissertation, my own model of the Haustafel form as consisting of the
following literary, linguistic, and conceptual elements: (1) a focusing on a series of groups and their
responsibilities associated with a household; (2) the grouping of those addressed into pairs of dominant
and subordinate counterparts; (3) intergroup reciprocity, or the implied moral responsibility
of both the dominant and subordinate groups to each other; (4) direct address, in which the author